We're all cynical. We all spend our time doing one of two things: either rolling our eyes and sneering at everything we don't like, or overcorrecting the other way when life becomes far too real in a way we're deeply uncomfortable with. I'm going to try real hard not to overcorrect.

Here's the thing about living with depression: it makes it real hard to do anything at all. You have to hold onto the happiness you have when it comes and try insanely hard not to forget what it feels like when it's not there.

Here's the thing about shitting on a guy for a decade: you never want him to DIE. We all outgrew Robin Williams together. We all got too cool for him, right around the same time his movies stopped being good. That's probably unfair to all parties, but it is what it is. He never stopped being manic on talk shows, never stopped always being around, just sweating and running up and mugging for the camera on Letterman and Leno when he was there to promote his latest movie. But not really, because the movies weren't great; he was just there reminding you he was still there. That mania masked a lot. He was honest about his struggles with depression and substance abuse, which means maybe we should have been kinder to him.

The last Robin Williams movie I truly loved -- and loved him in -- was Death to Smoochy in 2002, a movie that most people hate. He'd been in or filmed roles for nearly 30 movies since 2002, in addition to starring in a television series and innumerable television guest spots, stand-up shows, etc. That's a lifetime of output in the past 12 years, but most of us hardly saw any of it. I've been trying to make movies for 15 years and it's still soul-crushing to me every time I get a studio note or something doesn't come out the way I want. Turns out that we can all be a little kinder. But of course, we knew that already.

We all learned from Robin Williams. Some of us a little, some of us a lot. He made a massive amount of people realize they wanted to make people laugh. It's easy to lose sight of what you used to love when those things stop doing precisely what you want them to do.

For almost 20 years I've been telling people I'd never forgive Robin Williams for winning Best Supporting Actor over Burt Reynolds in 1997. I'm sorry, Robin. Turns out I didn't mean it after all.